Professor Richard Hills FRS

Emeritus Professor of Radio Astronomy, Astrophysics Group, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge

Since the early 1970s Richard Hills has played a leading role in the development of radio astronomy at millimetre wavelengths, an essential zone of the spectrum for the study of star formation in galaxies. As Project Scientist of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Hawaii he was closely involved with the design and operation of this highly successful telescope. For his outstanding contribution to this project he was awarded the Jacksonian Gwilt Medal and Gift of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1989. From 2007 to 2012 he was Project Scientist of the Atacama Large Millimetre/Submillimetre Array (ALMA) in Chile. The first scheduled observations at 345 GHz using 16 of the planned 66 antennas took place in September 2011. These demonstrated the full angular resolution obtained by phase-coherent aperture synthesis which requires continuous monitoring of atmospheric absorption along the line of sight above each antenna. The outstanding scientific leadership shown by Richard Hills undoubtedly played a major part in the success of this challenging international project.